inFAMOUS: Time Paradox
by Wingah
Summary: Roman is a boy from the year 2038, who gained Time Travel powers similar to Kessler, and he went back to the year 2011 so he could save the world from an evil Delsin Rowe. (Bad Karma Delsin, Good Karma Cole.)
1. chapter 1

**_C R A S H !_**

I gasped loudly, stumbling through the shining blue portal behind me. I gasped, clutching my heart. Having your atoms taken apart and re-written was _not_ fun.

I groaned, lifting up my left hand, said hand covered in a thick metal glove. I hated who I looked like, but it had to be done to focus my power.

I pulled on the hood of my hoodie, so it covered my red hair. I looked around where I was.. Concrete under my feet, several walls of brick around me. Nothing really screamed "destroyed" about this situation, but I couldn't be sure.

I slowly stumbled out of the alleyway, groaning. I just began to process the redish hue of the world around me. I analyzed the area around the exit to the alleyway, noticing small things. A single, white line on the street, a strangely sanitary-looking trash can sitting peacefully next to me..

And sounds of electric explosions in the distance.

I watched a man in a business suit walk by, holding a Newspaper. He dumped it in a trashcan, and I waited until he passed around the corner before I quickly snatched the Newspaper from the trash.

 _September 25, 2011._

 _Holy fucking shit._

"I did it..?"

"Holy shit, I actually did it!"

I laughed (only half-hysteric), grabbing my hair from underneath my hoodie. "I actually fucking did it! I traveled back in time! YEA-HEAH!"

A grin split across my face, and I let my hand fall from my hair. I had finally done it.

I had travelled back in time.

\--

Cole MacGrath always had trouble with moral choices. With each one he makes, something bad happens. The only thing that makes them bad or good was _who_ got hurt.

And that gave him no relief.

He zipped along a wire above the road, the wind feeling great running across his face, keeping his static thrusters on even as the lightning coursed under his feet, both of which kept him moving.

A person in a white hood caught his attention quicker than he would've normally noticed.

It wasn't the hood that bothered him, no, it was that the _metal glove_ on his hand. It reminded him entirely too much of Kessler.

He leapt off the wire, soaring into the air by an arc of lightning, using his static thrusters to land on the closest building to the stranger.

Cole watched as the stranger laughed hysterically, tears of what seemed to be happiness trailing down his face.

"I did it! I actually fucking did it!" He yelled, clutching his choppy, red hair. He looked up into the air, before pausing as he noticed Cole.

Cole froze to, noticing something for the first time; This kid didn't have pupils or irises.

Just like Kessler.

The kid looked up at Cole, beforr cracking a smile.

"Just the guy I needed to see!"

\--

The moment I saw Cole, I knew my luck was beginning to turn.

I thought I'd have to spend at least a couple hours tracking him down, but, as it turns out, he came to me.

Pure, unfiltered _time_ poured out of my feet, rocketing me into the air. I caught the edge of the building Cole was on with my metal glove. I climbed onto the roof, landing next to Cole.

His eyes narrowed at me, and I remembered a side effect of time travel.

Losing everthing in your eyes but the whites.

Holy _Hell,_ I must look like Kessler right now.

Electricity sparked inbetween his fingers, and I held my hands up. "Woah, woah, I don't want to fight."

His eyes narrowed further. "Then what do you want?"

I sighed, more white energy floating in between the cracks of my fingers, forming into a ball. It showed a broken, decimated wasteland.

"I came to help."


	2. Chapter 2: The RFI

_You have got __to be shitting me._

A bullet whizzed past my head, my hood gently rippling from the bullet pulling at the air pressure around it.

My eyes narrowed, and I threw myself to the right, behind an air conditioning unit. The bullets kept tinking against the thin aluminum of the conditioner. Sooner or later, the bullets would rip through the cooling unit, and it'd rip through me like butter.

I tensed up, white energy collecting under my feet. With a FWOOSH, I shot into the air, my clothes rippling with the air collecting around me. I gathered a blast of the aforementioned Time Energy folding in around my glove. I threw the Energy out towards the Militia, the focused on making the bullet casings in their guns corrode into dust.

I could practically feel the fear rolling off them in waves as they pull the triggers, the guns jammed, but I simply walked away.

Cole looked at me weirdly, his eyes narrowed. I held up five fingers. Then four. Three. Two.

As my second finger came down to hit one, their guns cooked in their hands, blowing both the Militia soldiers sky-high. Cole's eyes widened, and I grinned.

".. How did you do that..?"

I looked at the scorch mark on the ground, my grin softening as I started explaining. "It's.. Pretty simple, actually." I waved my hand, two white echo-esque versions of the Militia soldiers I had just killed appearing. I glanced at Cole, his eyebrows furrowed.

So he's familiar with this..

"I rapidly aged the bullet casings in the guns to the point where they corroded into dust," I explained, showing the Militia beginning to panic and pull the trigger rapidly. "The Militia panicked, and, as they pulled the trigger, the gunpowder still in the gun went off, but, without the shell or the casing, the gunpowder still went off inside the gun." The gun slowly blew to pieces in the guys' hands.

"Impressive.." Cole whispered quietly. He had been watching me ever since I had stepped out of the portal, and I promised to tell him what happened.. But only if I got to their base of operations. The RFI was there, and I couldn't tell him the plan I had without everybody that was involved there.

Cole thought it over for a moment, and I could almost see what we've labeled a "Karmic Choice", a way for people to pinpoint a challenging decision that might majorly affect anything from how someone acts to the biggest Karmic Choice ever made.

The choice to activate the RFI.

Cole looked at me, sighing. "Fine. You can come." He paused for a moment. "On one condition of my own."

I nodded, ready to accept.

"If you hurt any of the people there.. I _swear_ to **_god_** I will hunt you down, and personally torture you."

… Well then.

I nodded, much to Cole's surprise.

He sighed, his hands sparking with electricity and.. Mist..?

"Follow me," He said, leaping into the air as a pillar of ice appeared under him, firing him even higher into the air.

I whistled quietly, my eyes wide. "... That was never mentioned in the stories.."

\--

After following Cole three or four blocks, we ended up on a rooftop a couple blocks away from where I appeared. It was fairly simple, a door to the building itself so non-conduits can get up, a small box TV, a couch to crash on, a coffee table with the RFI placed in the middle, both a chubby dude (with an Elvis Presley haircut and matching glasses) and an Asian (with blue seemingly crawling up her arms and bleach-white skin).

A black girl with dreads and an awfully revealing outfit appeared on the roof, sitting on a crate to the right of the couch. She put her head in her hand. "It was bad." She said, her voice shaking. "It was so bad, Cole.."

Cole winced subtly, going over to pat her on the back. "I'm glad you made it, Nix."

The ice-cold girl looked to me, her eyebrows furrowed in skepticism. "Cole.. Who is that?"

Cole came over to stand in front of me, his eyes looking down. "Introduce yourself."

I sighed, my hands shaking slightly in nervousness. "My name is Roman," I said, my voice shaking slightly. "I came from a.. Long way to help you defeat the beast."

The Elvis guy- Zeke Dunbar, I'd gathered -Stood up, "Wait, what? But we already have the RFI." He said, sounding defiant.

I nodded. "But there's a catch." I gestured to the RFI. "The.. The RFI will kill every conduit on Earth."

Everyone paused for a moment. Nix stood up, her arms gesturing around crazily. "I don't give a damn! That beast killed my babies, and wiped out half the U.S.! We can't give a damn!"

I nodded. Before the blue girl- Lucy Kuo -started talking her counter-argument, I spoke up again, "You're half-right, Nix. But.." I gulped, trying to steady my voice. ".. There's a man, a kid, at this current point in time.." I looked up, towards the reddened sky. "He'll grow up to be the most powerful conduit on Earth. He'll wipe out the whole U.S... And steal the powers of every conduit in a prison facility, Curdan Cay."

That must've been an information dump on them, as they took a couple moments to process it.

Kuo was the first one to speak up. "Wait, if the RFI did wipe out all conduits, then why-?"

"- was there a conduit to take over the world?" I sighed. "The conduit gene was released into the world when the Ray Sphere blew in Empire City. Although all the people in the world with the gene were killed, some people who were affected by the Ray Field Radiation were still carrying the gene, but it was buried so deep they lived." I explained, taking a second to sigh.

".. That makes no sense." Kuo said, looking at me skeptically. "How do you know this..?"

"Time travel."

Nix looked at me, rolling her eyes. "Bitch, Time Travel ain't real."

"It's real," Cole said suddenly. "I've seen it."

Kuo's eyes widened.

Zeke looked down, his posture taunt and his eyebrows folded upward.

"We need Cole to stop the man from coming to power. I know who he is, and where he lives." I looked to the group. "But he gets his powers in 2018, from a prison facility that doesn't even exist yet."

Zeke glanced at me again. "Well, how are we supposed to defeat The Beast without the RFI?"

"Who said we need the RFI?" I said, pulling a small, boxed container from my pants pocket. "This is an RFI adapter, connected to The Beast's DNA. It'll fry every atom in his body, eradicating him."

"Like a beast-specific nuke that he won't just absorb?"

"Kinda."

I handed the adapter to Zeke, and he opened the container to see the chip on the inside.

".. Best chance we got."

Cole nodded, turning to me. "Well.. Let's get ready."


	3. Chapter 3: The Battle

It only took a couple of minutes for Zeke to install the RFI Adapter. In the meantime, however, I had to deal with Kuo's nagging.

"Who are you?" Kuo asked, her eyes narrowed at me, and I rolled mine.

Well, I would have, if I'd have had any color in my eyes.

"I've told you already, Lucy, I'm Roman, a conduit with time powers."

She glared at me, and I resisted the urgency to shrink under her gaze.

"Prove it."

I paused, thinking. How would I prove to her that I had time powers?

I patted the AC unit I was sitting on, and it slowly started rusting. I snapped, standing. The AC rusted even quicker, before corroding and eventually turning into tiny speckles of dust.

Kuo's eyes had gone wide, her arms slack. "Holy shit."

I twisted my hand with my metal glove, and the AC slowly started taking shape again. It built itself back up, and, once taking shape, the rust receded back into nothingness.

".. Okay, wow. That's.." She paused, looking for the right word. ".. Impressive."

Before I could even make a snarky comment, she started talking again.

"Okay, what exact year are you from? You said that the guy you're trying to stop got his powers in 2018, but you never said what year you were from."

I paused. ".. I'm from 2038."

Kuo's eyes widened.

"H.. How bad is it that it's been going on for twenty years..?"

I sat on the AC Unit again, looking at the metal glove. "Really bad." I paused, looking for the right collection of words. "So bad that the world's been pretty much wiped out. I was helping out a faction of Curdan Cay, the facility that held a bunch of conduit prisoners. If they could get a pair of handcuffs that restricted his powers on him, they'd be home free, but.."

I paused, taking a shaky breath.

".. He found out. Broke in using a bunch of conduit's powers, and.. Well." I paused, letting out a calm, wavering breath.

"Let's just say that's what ended with me hopping through that portal."

She stayed quiet for a full two minutes, and just as she was about to speak up, Zeke called us over.

We rushed over, and I looked to the RFI. It looked no different, but I could feel that it had a less devastating effect on the timeline. I just had to make sure it went off, and that Delsin wouldn't get his powers. Ever.

I shook the brief thought out of my head.

"If the changes the chip made are right, this should only destroy The Beast, right?"

I nodded. "Cole will still have to power it, though, and since it's made to sync with The Beast's DNA, he's going to have to get close."

Kuo narrowed her eyes, glaring at me. "Just how close?"

I shrugged. "I dunno, two, maybe three hundred yards away?"

Her jaw dropped. "Excuse me, WHAT?!"

I held my arms up to protect myself. "Woah, woah, hey, it was just a rough estimate." I shrugged. "In all reality, the guys at Curdan Cay never told me just how far away he had to be to activate it."

A rumble shook the air. Cole came sprinting out of nowhere, landing and rolling onto the ground.

".. He's here." Cole said. He looked to me. "You better damn hope this works, or there's going to be Hell to pay."

He sprinted off, floating away to defeat the Beast.

I stayed silent as Kuo and Nix took off to help him.

"Aren't you going to help them?" Zeke asked me.

I only laughed lightly. "Would if I could. The Beast's unique ability to absorb energy and his ability to distribute that energy can have.. Unintended consequences."

"So, if you zapped him, he could wipe out the world?"

"Basically, yeah."

He stayed silent for a beat. "That sucks."

I nodded.

The Beast had destroyed Laroche's boats and attacks with ease. He wiped out several buildings, killed hundreds of people. Kuo and Nix had fought valiantly, but ultimately, they were wiped out. Cole didn't know if they were dead or not, but he didn't go looking. He had a world to save.

The Beast was next to the cathedral when he started begging Cole to take his power, to finish what he started, and what the RFI would really do.

Cole didn't listen to The Beast's spiel. In seconds, he was in the air with the RFI, charging it up with electricity coursing through his veins. His eyes turned a brilliant white just as The Beast began screaming. He was quickly turned into his John White version, and finally, finally, fell two hundred feet to the ground below.

John White, The Beast, was dead.

Along with him, The RFI had eradicated every semblance of the plague in the world to destruction. It seemed as if the world was saved.

It wasn't.

I let people celebrate, sure, but I wasn't going to just sit back and watch. I had to make sure Delsin never gained his powers. There was only one way to do that.

A portal opened in front of me, and I was about to head through when Kuo came up behind me. I knew she wasn't dead. She was too strong to die like that. Nix, though..

"Where are you going?"

I stayed silent for a beat. "To finish what I came here to stop."

"But, wait, wouldn't the RFI-"

"Have killed all conduits?" I laughed. "It should've, but it didn't. This means Curdan Cay was never founded, and that means Rowe wouldn't have had a chance to gain his powers. Still, though.."

I looked to my actual hand, the one that wasn't covered in the metal glove. "I have to make sure."

"Wait, are you-?"

"I'm not going to kill him unless I need to, Kuo, but if I need to, I won't hesitate."

I didn't wait for her to talk again before I walked through the portal.


	4. Chapter 4: The End

As I stepped out, something felt.. Wrong. Like someone was right there behind me.

The portal closed, and the feeling stayed. I heard a gun click, and my eyes widened.

"Hello, Roman."

The voice sounded so.. Familiar?

"Kuo?"

I turned, seeing a 30-year-old Lucy Kuo aiming a gun to my head. But.. That was impossible. How could she of known exactly where I was going to be?

"Seven years is a long time, Roman. And I'm an NSA agent. You do the math."

We were in a back alley of the Native American reservation Delsin lived in. I found several ways that I could get out, but I wanted to see how this was going to end.

"So, you figured out where Delsin Rowe lived, found the deepest, darkest alley, and checked this place for, what, seven years? Seems a bit obsessive, Lucy."

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't call me that."

I rolled my eyes. "Come on, Kuo, I didn't give you any indication of when I'd be here."

"You confirmed it started in 2018."

"So, you just checked here every day for 10 months? Seems a bit farfetched."

"Cole developed Time Powers of his own-"

I groaned. "-And detected Temporal Distortion. Perfect."

She grinned, pulling back on the chamber of the gun. "So, any last words?"

I shrugged. "These aren't my last words."

Her eyes widened in surprise, and she pulled on the trigger. The bullet slowed to a stop, time itself around me, and I plucked the bullet out of thin air. I took a leisured step to the side of the gun, and placed it to the weapon's side.

I let time go back to normal speed, the bullet crashing into the gun and forcing it out of her hand. She gasped and growled, grabbing my throat and chilling me to the bone.

I let a time portal open below her, and she fell in, losing her grip on me as she screamed. I landed back on the ground as she slipped through, before I opened the portal again above me, her falling through and landing on the ground with a loud THUMP.

I sighed, looking to Kuo. "Look, Kuo, you're cool and all, literally, but I gotta do this. It's the only way to make sure the timeline's safe. I don't wanna be forced to kill you."

She looked at me, hatred turning her already Icy gaze even more.. Cold. "And how do I know you wanna 'fix' the timeline?"

"I could've made that bullet tear through your skull."

Kuo just screamed, an ice pillar appearing below me, shooting me into the air. I manipulated the air around me to a time where it was dense enough to stand on. That was only one or two milliseconds near the beginning, but I prolonged those milliseconds so that I could easily stand on what looked like thin air.

Briefly, I saw a Military Truck coming down the road. It was a Curdan Cay holding truck, designed to keep conduits in and everybody else out.

I sped towards it, landing on a nearby rooftop. The vehicle simply kept driving. No one broke out. The world was safe.

I let out a sigh of relief, looking to Kuo. "My work here is done."

She looked at me with her eyes narrowed. "You so sure about that? You never know what could happen."

"I've run this calculation a million times, Kuo. There's no other way for Delsin to get the powers he needs." I rose my hand, opening a portal.

".. Where are you going to go now..?"

I looked to the swirling portal. "I'm going to assemble a team. One that fights threats like Delsin. Strong. United."

".. That seems a little cheesy."

I grinned. "I know."

I stepped through the portal, leaving Kuo there to wonder my next move. When or where I'd show up in the timeline.

Luckily, there's no such thing as one timeline.


End file.
